Charity GAME Fun!!

Hello Everyone,

This week started out with ANOTHER 5 hour bus trip for ANOTHER game on the road. The bus trips don’t seem to be getting any shorter, but they do seem to be going by faster now that over half the team has PSP’s (Playstation Portable). We all have the same game and can play against each other on the bus. There have been some pretty heated games. Breniu (our young Point Guard) seems to be winning a lot, but we all think he is cheating a little bit. I’m a little bias but I’m going to go ahead a say that I was the best! I’m thinking we should set up a psp tournament with the other teams in the league. Kotwica Sea wizards would definitely take gold.




We stayed outside the city in a small country hotel. When the name is translated it is something like “the stables”. They have a bunch of property where they train and keep horses. It had about 20 rooms in the two story building. It had a small restaurant where we ate our meals which were very good. The main problem with this place was the beds. I think they designed them for the jockeys who were training the horses. If you were 6 foot or over you would have a terrible time trying to sleep. They had a wooden foot rest at the end, and there was no way to stretch out. Since most of the players on this team are 6’4” or taller it made for a long night. This may have played a role into how bad we played.


The GAME

We were outplayed, out coached, out hustled, out rebounded, and whatever other outs you can come up with. They played very aggressive and built a 10 point lead very quickly. We were throwing the ball to them on almost every offensive possession. We shot terrible like 5-24 from three. They did not shoot very well from three either but their big men killed us. Three of their big men were very close to double doubles. We were making mistakes defensively that we have not made all year. At times we showed flashes of our old selves but just could not overcome the deficit and ended up losing by double digits.

Personally, I felt like I was just floating out there. I had taken some medicine for my leg and I think it messed with me. I went 1-3 for two points, had a couple assists and rebounds. I did not play very many minutes, but I gave coach no reason to play me. This was probably my worst game this season. I think we all took accountability for the loss and we watched the film and will improve from the loss.

It does not get any easier in the seven games we have left, starting with next Sunday in Sopot to play the first place team in the league, Prokom. We played them tough at home going into overtime and really handing them the game in overtime. It will not be easy going into their gym, but I think we have shown we can win on the road.

We had a charity game on Saturday in a town about 40 minutes away. It is not exactly what we wanted to do on our weekend off, but we made the most of it. It was nice to have a chance to get the bad taste from the defeat we suffered earlier in the week. We played Sportino, which is a team we play again in 3 or 4 weeks.

We went there in the morning and had a practice with the kids, running them through some drills. My station was dribbling with Kevin, skip, and Shimy. I think the kids enjoyed themselves which is what counts.

During halftime of the game they had dunk and three point contests. Skip and Sefton did some dunks for the crowd. I shot in the three point contest and made 10 out of 15, which was good enough for the victory. Then at the end of the third quarter they had me shoot free throws against a fan, only I was blind folded. I really thought I would knock one down, but it didn’t happen. I received a nice bag pack that I’m sure I will regift to one of my siblings.



The game went well for us as we won by 10 with a majority of our players not playing. Kevin did not play in the second half, Dawid didn’t play at all as he is still trying to get his ankle 100%, Captain Tom only played like 5 minutes, and skip and drew set most of the second half as well. A lot of them did not want to play because the game did not mean anything. I was having fun, but was not planning on playing 36 minutes and I am hurting today. I played pretty well scoring 20 points, and having 2 dunks. That is the first time in my career that I ever had 2 dunks in one game. I wished these stats counted for the league stats that would have been a nice game for me. We stuck around after the game taking photos and signing autographs for the kids and other fans. Overall it was a fun day and got our minds of the loss!


Until next time!

“Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal”

This is BC gone for now

Seven in a row, the hard way!

Hello Everyone,

For the seven people that voted for “more pictures and less stories” this might not be the post for you this week! I’ll start with this week’s game since it was a low key week.

The Game

We made the five hour trip to Poznan, which is a fairly big city. The bus was nice this time with a mini flat screen and some Vegas style neon lights on the inside. Of course since we splurged on the bus we had to stay at a hotel that was built before they knew how to construct balconies or have internet. The room had a door for the balcony, but there was maybe 1 foot of space. Drew labeled it as the suicide balcony because that is the only thing you could have accomplished off of it.

PBG is a team that is struggling in the league. They are 6-13 I believe, which is crazy to me because they have some talent on that team. They have 3 solid big men, a strong 3, and 2 solid guards. We jumped on them very early going up by 17 at half. We played great D in the first half and were making a lot of our shots. We like to play in bigger arenas. This was a nice sized arena that resembled Illinois University’s gym. They had very little fans that showed up. In fact I think the kotwica fans outnumber them or at least were 2 times louder. Thanks a lot to the all the fans that made the trip and supported us.

The second half was a very different story. I think the refs made a decision at halftime to let PBG get back in the game. I’m not a player that blames refs for wins or loses very often, but it definitely looked like these refs had some money on the game and needed to cover the spread. I will just throw out a couple numbers and you can make a pretty solid judgment. They shot 43 free throws, they called over 40 fouls total, and we had 2 guys foul out and 2 more with 4 fouls. On top of that I received my first technical ever (I think). I know I did not have any at butler or last year. Apparently he thought I insulted him, which was not the case at all. I told him I was pushed with a curse word before it, and he took it as I was calling him something else. When Thomas went over to talk to him about it apparently the ref said “why are you guys so mad? You’re winning, and you have won a ton of games all ready”. That is just amazing that he would actually say that. That is enough on the refs as we escaped with a four point win so I will take it.

It was a very balanced scoring with 5 players in double digits. I led the team with 13 points (2-3, 1-2 (3’s) 6-7 (foul line), and a couple assists. I hit 4 free throws at the end to seal the game for us. I have to lead the league in four point plays (making the three pointer and getting fouled) as I had another one this game. That would bring my total to 5 or 6 which is pretty good.

There were a couple positives from the game. We are 100% again. Skip had an effective game and looks like his finger is healed, while dawid also was very effective in his minutes having some finishes down low and hitting a three. Drew held the leading scorer in the league well below his average.

We play on the road again on Wednesday, shooting for our eighth straight win!

Since not much happened during the week I figured I would respond to the questions of comparing the Swedish league vs. the polish league in my opinion.

The easy answer right away would be the polish league is stronger. I feel the main reason for this is because how many Americans are allowed to play. In Sweden a team can only have 2, I believe in Poland you can have 4 or maybe more. I’m not saying American players are better then polish players, but I think when you allow more Americans it strengthens the whole league because of the effect it has from brining them in. The more Americans allowed means less spots for polish players, if teams bring them in, which means polish players must fight for the remaining spots. This makes them better as they are improving there game to take those spots (Hopefully that makes some sense).

A big difference in the two leagues is I see Sweden as more of a guard league, where I see Poland as more of a big man league. There are a lot more 6’10” (208 in Europe) and up players in Poland where it was rare to have that in Sweden. A lot of the five men in Sweden I would compare to G. Reese from AZS.

As far as the gyms go in the two countries they are very similar, smaller gyms with a lot of fans in them. In NCAA the gyms were all much bigger. Most gyms were the size of Anwil if not bigger. At butler the gym could hold somewhere around 11,000 people. I think the polish fans cheer louder and bring more noise makers to the games (which I like). I also think polish fans have a lot more songs and victory cheers. I didn’t hear anyone singing at the games in Sweden (no Sialala lalalala). I think the one big difference from the NCAA is when the home team is shooting free throws everyone is quiet. Where here they are clapping or banging the drums during free throws.

Hopefully that gives you some in sight into the two leagues from my view point. I can’t pick one league over the other because the fans in Sodertalje were very kind and seem to appreciate my game, where as the fans in Kotwica have also showed the same support!!

I was wondering if someone could help me out on where these two restaurants are as I would like to test them out and give you my feed back "dramat" "brovaria". Also I have eaten at the grill house a couple times now and it is one of my favorites.

Until next time!

“Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal”

This is BC gone for now

Does this mean i'm a local HERO!?!?!

Hello Everyone,

Well this week was filled with some exploring, a mini photo shoot, a full week of practice and some bad weather.

For some reason Morgan was not very entertained by my TV that still only gets 6 stations and 2 of them are the blurry versions of the third. She was not able to perfect the polish language in the short time and she also does not read sign language. Instead of subtitles on the shows they put a picture of a woman in the corner of the TV who signs the whole show. I don’t know if this is because they have many deaf people in Poland that know multiple languages or they don’t teach their deaf to read. So we headed out to see the beautiful town of Kolobrzeg.


We started at the beach and the big lighthouse. It was freezing that day so I bought Morgan one of those furry white caps. If they couldn’t tell we weren’t locals they could now. We walked some of the beach and saw some places even I have not seen yet. Of course we got plenty of pictures. I also showed her downtown where we walked around the small mall and some other little stores.

We ate out for two good dinners, the first at the famous DaVinci Pizza (it has been mentioned 4 times on here). On her last night we went to a really nice place with the team captain and his wife. I don’t know how to spell it, but if you translate it as “the house of the executioner”. It had a medieval theme to the restaurant. I FOUND BEEF! They actually had beef steak there that was very good, along with English menus (you can now imagine how nice this restaurant had to be). The dinner would have been perfect EXCEPT one table of guys. There were 3 men sitting diagonal to us who decided to get plastered (drunk) on a Thursday night dinner. These guys were very obnoxious yelling for the waiter multiple times, one came over and tried to speak French to us, and another guy almost fell into are table when he stood up (not joking). Then he proceeded to go to the restroom, but instead ended up in the kitchen and would not leave it. Thomas (captain) was not very amused and said those are the type of guys that give Poland a bad name.

Many polish fans have found my blog which I think is great. I appreciate all the comments. One polish journalist found it pretty interesting and wanted to do a feature for the magazine he writes for. He wanted to title it “POLAND, Through the Eyes Of A Young American”. He is going to take some things that I have written in my blog along with some of the answers to his questions. He wanted to put some photos of me playing basketball, but also of me in front of my computer. The first photographer he sent came on the wrong day, and woke me up early (9 AM is early for me). He came to my apartment and took some corny pictures of me pointing at the screen and standing outside my apartment. The journalist did not like those as I figured he wouldn’t so he sent another guy (I can’t remember his name so he is the new guy). If you compared the two guys the new guy was like the Kobe Bryant of photography. He took a ton of shots doing many different things, but he used the lighting in unique ways. He also took some photos of me cooking in the kitchen (scrambled eggs) and drinking some of my Kool-aid. I let him try some of my sugar water and he loved it so I gave him a single packet to make at home. It should be pretty cool to see the final product and give me something to take home to the scrap book.

Practice was pretty good all week. Skip is back practicing. He will try out the hand on Sunday. His hand is not 100% healed, but he plays with it taped up. Our big man Dawid turned is ankle for the second time in like 4 weeks and was not able to play. I will have to play some 4 if he is not able to play. We did not have our gym all week because they were having a high school prom there so we had to practice one day at some school. The gym looked alright at first, but when you were running on the floor it felt like it had little pot holes in it. It was a very small gym with some wooden baskets hanging on the side of the gym. One of our younger players “Breniu” decided to dunk on it and ripped the rim down. He is a 6 ft guard so I bet he felt pretty big even though the goal was only 9’6”. I had a pretty good practice in the freezing gym so I guess I don’t have a lot to complain about it, but luckily we thawed out in time for the game.

The Game

We got a big win in the “DERBY” against AZS, our biggest rival. We dominated the whole game starting with Drew’s dunk on the first possession and ending with Kiko’s bank shot. Everyone had a very solid game. I believe we had 5 or 6 players in double figures. The atmosphere was great of course there was a ton of AZS fans, but I was really surprised at the number of Kotwica fans. I know it is close, but it almost seemed as many as we get at home games. They were very loud and cheering the whole game, but of course we gave them something to cheer about since we led the whole game.

Personally, I had a very solid game. I did not score many points (5), but I made my presence felt in other areas. I was 1-2 from 3, 2-4 from foul line (very frustrating), 3 boards, 5 assists (AZS stat keepers robed me of a couple), 2 steals, and 2 big charges. Apparently the announcers said I was the best player on the floor (I felt like this is a big compliment to my game showing I can have an impact other then scoring). I guarded three positions, the point guard some, the three man, and also guarding their best player who is a 4 some as well.

To again illustrate how big a rivalry this is, the police had to escort the bus out of town. We were not even able to stop at pizza hut. I’m not sure if this will show up as a polish scandal not letting us get some of that delicious pan pizza, but it should.

We play 3 more on the road before we get to play at home. We have a better road record then home right now. I think we like playing in packed houses so hopefully we can get a few more fans out the next time we play at home.

•I did not proof read this post so sorry if there are a lot of errors, but then again if I did proof read there would still be errors.

I will leave you with a little quote from a book I was giving as a gift.

“If all I’m remembered for is being a good basketball player, then I’ve done a bad job with the rest of my life”


Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Hello Everyone,

Another year, another country, and MORE fireworks, I’m talking double the fireworks of Sweden. Poland is crazy with them as well, lighting them 2 feet from the crowd. Morgan is here celebrating New Years with me again. We went downtown by the park where it seems all of Kolobrezeg gathers. It was fun yelling and giving out hugs, also if you could enjoy the fireworks that made it into the air they were nice, but a majority of the time we were watching the ones that did not make it in the air. Amateur fireworks are dangerous enough, but add in that most of the people that were shooting them off were not sober. Drew took a bottle rocket to the shoulder, and many others looked like they took some to the face. Luckily it was no one else from the team.

On January 2, we headed to Germany to play two games. This trip had bad written all over it before we ever left. We had only had one practice since the break and then we were playing two games. If rust would have been the only problem we could have dealt with it a lot better, but the trip itself is what turned disastrous. The bus arrived about 15 minutes late for departure, but the real surprise was when we got on the bus and the male volleyball team had the whole front area. Now when I say male volleyball team I’m sure you imagine some tall, young, athletic guys. STOP that vision right now. This team looked like the bad version of a YMCA rec league (the old man’s division). More on the volleyball team later. Now we focus on the bus. I would have rather rode a high school bus. This bus smelled of sweaty clothes that have been left out for a week, we were cramped with very little leg room for anyone (I couldn’t even take my shoes off because the floor hadn’t been cleaned since the bus was put into operation), and it averaged 30 MPH. I am not exaggerating when I say 30 MPH. The trip was supposed to take 7 hours, which is not all that close to begin with after we just had a full day of travel to get back to Poland. The trip took 11 in a half hours! With stops almost every 2 hours.

We stopped at some of the worst spots as well. We stopped at a rest park, well a rest park that had not been maintained since the ice ages, and it felt that way inside this place. It was absolutely freezing. I think most prisoners would decline this place. I can’t imagine how bad it had to be for Morgan. These stops were all in Germany so I guess the rumor is true that Poland has better bathrooms. Germany was trying to fix their image of bathrooms and this was obvious on the next stop. You had to pay for the restroom this time. Since I did not have any euros we borrowed money from the coach. From Morgan’s report back it seems that Poland still has better bathrooms.

At this point you might be thinking that this trip doesn’t sound that bad Brandon? It gets better. Since we arrived so late we were not able to have a practice which means we still had only had one practice to play two games. The next morning we loaded the bus so we could at least have an hour shoot around. That hour turned into a half hour real quick when the bus driver got lost on the way to the gym. Instead of a half hour trip to the gym it turned into an hour trip and for some reason we also had no heat the whole trip. Then after the short shoot around we had to walk to the bus. We all figured this would be a one or two block walk. It was like half a mile which again you are probably saying to yourself, “Brandon I used to walk 9 miles to school uphill”. Well add that it was freezing and 1-2 inches of snow on the ground. Now were getting close to game time.

We had to go to the gym early to watch the volleyball team play. I believe they were supposed to play at 5:30. We were not playing in the same gym that shoot around was in, which was a big problem for the bus driver because we got lost again. We arrived at the gym at 5:50. The funny thing was the team that they were playing were not even prepared to play. They had no nets or polls up. This is where the story gets kind of comical. There was nothing official about this volleyball game. They had no real refs, they did not even have correct volleyball lines, and the net they put up was three badminton nets tied together to make one with a gaping hole in the middle where they were tied together. This was seriously a YMCA rec. league game. Who travels 11 hours for a rec. league game? I don’t want to sound like I don’t like the volleyball team because there are some big fans of the team that came on the trip and played. I just found it very unusual that you would travel that far for just one game that did not count for anything. The team is not in any league or anything like that either back in poland. The good thing was the polish team won, unlike ourselves.

The GAMES

We were very rusty, which can be expected after a nine day break and one practice, we were all pretty off on our shooting the first game except sefton. He played a really good all around game with some steals, dunks, and threes. He was the one bright spot of the team. We played padoborn, which is a team we had already beaten in the preseason and should have again. Personally, I felt alright but my jump shot did not. I was 0-7 from three. I scored 7 points, and added 4 steals. We were defiantly suffering from some long road trips we have put our bodies through as everyone looked a step slower.

The second game was a lot better but we still lost. We had a chance to win at the end. We were down one with 26 seconds and Kevin missed both free throws. We tried to foul but for some reason the German refs would not give us the call. They waited till the guy cut to the basket for a lay-up then called an intentional foul. That pretty much sealed the game.

If you just strictly looked at the stat sheet one could see a good game was played by both teams. Both teams had 5 players with over 10 points and no one with more then 20. Also, both teams shot over 50% from the field for the game. I had 12 points on 3-5 from 2 and 2-4 from three.

I think the entire team is happy to have this trip over with as it was filled with many problems and very uncomfortable rides, but of course we could not just come home. We had to drive through a blizzard that slowed our bus to almost a crawl. The one positive to take from the trip is the food was pretty good.

We had a couple good meals at the hotel, then we stopped at American diner after the first game, but it was not anywhere close to a real American diner. The food was ok, but again we are back in Europe where they don’t believe in beef products. The burger they gave us was the cafeteria beef. I was hoping that they could make a good shake, but they failed on this as well. I might as well have ordered strawberry milk. The next town we played in we had Chinese buffet (before the game). I have yet to have bad food at a Chinese restaurant over here. After the game we were served pasta with no forks. We had to take the lid and scoop it out (just some more great planning that was featured on this trip).



Before you walk away from this post saying “Brandon you are just one big complainer”, I don’t see it like that. I see it more as looking at the situation strictly from pro’s and con’s, and there were very little if any pro’s on this trip. I believe pretty much the entire team would agree with me that this trip was not necessary. I can safely say I am ready to get back to Poland and start a routine again, and playing games that matter.

We have 10 games left in polish league before the start of playoffs. It starts next Sunday with a TV game with our biggest rival AZK.









A pet shop also selling wedding dresses! (Morgan was thinking about buying this wedding dress, esp. if you got the two cages for free)






Until next time!

This is BC gone for now